Tuesday, December 18, 2007

So… what just are we buying with the $300 million we're sending to the Palestinian Authority over the next five years as part of a promised $5.6 billion bailout package from the rest of the world?

These statistics do not mean that foreign aid causes violence; but they do raise questions about the effectiveness of using foreign donations to promote moderation and combat terrorism.

In other words, a smart Palestinian leadership might conclude that it has a powerful financial incentive in provoking violence to wheedle welfare payments from nations eager to buy a respite from the Middle East imbroglios in which they've politically or rhetorically intricated themselves.

Who woulda thunk? All that aid money is scammed away by government-connected elites in both the donor country and the recipient country, the taxpayers in the donor country end up somewhat poorer, and the ordinary people in the recipient country end up dirt poor and so angry that they will explode at the slightest provocation.

It's exactly the same thing that happens with the $billions in welfare money and other aid to Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, all of Africa, most of Latin America, and a good chunk of Asia.

You have to get it out of your head that these aid projects were ever conceived from the point of view of helping anyone or making any part of the world peaceful. Peaceful conditions are great for most people, but they are a lousy way for elites to make money. They must create perpetual crises so that can perpetually claim to be working on solving the crises, so that they can stay perpetually on the taxpayer teat.

The same thing is at work domestically. Welfare for Indians is great because the more they get, the more debauched they become, the more extreme the conditions of health, crime, drugs, water, housing, etc., and the bigger the budgets (and graft) the elites will demand in order to "solve" the crisis. This is also why so many billions are spent on urban housing, welfare, food stamps, etc. More poverty, more filth and more violence mean more government jobs for the boys.